Arabic Language and the Sudan

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Recipe for fish baked with rice (Taajin Samak)

This is a tasty recipe that uses the bones of fish such ‘ijil, bayaD, garmuuT and kabaroos.

1) First, wash some of the fish and its bones (spine and part of the head) thoroughly in running water.

Place them in a bowl and marinate with the following ingredients (per kilo): 1 clove of crushed garlic, 1/2 teaspoon of kammuun (cumin), a pinch of kasbara (coriander), juice from one 1 large leemuun (lime), a pinch or two of filfil (black pepper) and a sprinkling of salt.

2) While the fish is marinating you can prepare the sauce.

Use a blender to mix tomatoes and 1 spoon of tomato paste. The sauce should be about 1.5 litres.
Cut 2 large onions into thin slices and fry them until they are just beginning to brown. Add the tomato sauce, together with some seasoning: ground coriander, salt and pepper. Leave to simmer for about 10 minutes. Leave the sauce to cool down a little and then add fresh leaves from a small bunch of broad leaved parsley. Cut up 2 green peppers into rings and add these as well.

5) Cover the bottom of an earthern ware tray (you could use a metal tray) with a thin layer of rice. Place the fish on top, followed by the rest of the rice. Finally add the sauce.

Cook in the oven until the sauce and rice have dried.

Serve with a Tahina sauce (see recipe in another post) or green salad.

This recipe can be quite time consuming to prepare but is nonetheless an excellent and delicious way of using up parts of the fish that would otherwise be thrown away. So if you get your fish cut up at the Murada Fish Market, make sure that they give you the bones!